


This New Year Will Be Just Fine

by sying



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-12 16:46:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13551486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sying/pseuds/sying
Summary: "You mean your philosophy on being only in a committed relationship with the Marine Corps and your right hand didn't cheer him right up?""I don't think Walt wants a relationship with my right hand, Ray."--Brad's on a mission to find out what's going on with Walt and discovers something about himself in the process.





	This New Year Will Be Just Fine

**Author's Note:**

> Repost.
> 
> Disclaimer: this is a non-profit work of fiction based on the HBO miniseries and its characters as portrayed by the actors.
> 
> Title taken from Barry Manilow's _It's Just Another New Year's Eve_. Because, you know, _Barry Manilow_...
> 
> Originally written for and posted at YAGKYAS' Good Cookies.

  
"Gentlemen, make room for some of the finest of the US Military," Brad says when he enters the tent with Walt and his fellow Marines, Taylor and Silverman, on his heels.

"More Devil Dogs?" Jonesy calls out from the back. "What the fuck, Colbert? Is America looking to infiltrate the Royal Marines? Baby Bush and Rummy must have some compensation issues if their current AO is still not big enough for them."

"Thank you, Jonesy, for immediately abusing these guys of the idea that the British are polite and respectful motherfuckers."

He grins at Walt while nudging apart two racks with his boot. "This is yours."

Walt smiles as he puts down his rucksack and then they're set upon by the guys. They go through the song and dance of introductions, the men interrogating Walt on Brad's Recon reputation and trying to find the weak spots. Brad isn't some baby-faced newbie who needs constant positive affirmation - never has been and wasn't even when he actually was a baby-faced newbie - but warmth blooms inside him when Walt refuses to play and simply says: "Brad's the best TL I ever had."

When everyone goes back to their own thing, they've got some time on their own to get to know each other and catch up until command deems it necessary to involve their eight men in the discussion and planning of their mission. Why this needs to be a small US/UK collaboration is beyond Brad's understanding but he's long given up trying to divine the wisdom of command. It’s starting to become a more regular thing so he better get used to it. Besides, if it means Brad gets his Marine Corps brothers on his team he’s not going to complain.

* * *

The last time Brad had seen Walt had been a little over sixteen months ago. They'd stood on Brad's porch just before Brad's parents would come to take him to the airport. "I'm gonna miss you," Walt had said, his face glowing in the warm mid-day sun but his smile dim.

"You too." And despite his excitement at joining the BRM, Brad had suddenly felt discombobulated.

A handshake and something that was closer to a hug than a pat on the back later, and Walt was gone. On the plane to the UK, Brad had dreamed of golden wheat fields under clear blue skies and a complete and utter sensation of belonging that he'd only rarely felt in his life. Wistfulness stole over him when he woke up and the feeling disappeared with every mile he got further away from his actual home. He'd taken his laptop to fiddle with some code, idly wondered if Walt's home looked like he thought it did. Put it out of his mind and didn't think about the dream again until Walt walked onto the base today and shook his hand.

* * *

They're sitting out in what's been dubbed The Patio (some shrubs and a small leafless tree with some cardboard sorry excuse for Christmas decorations surrounding a seating area that's really just some duct-taped together wooden crates serving as a bench and seats). Walt looks exactly the same, if a little harder; several deployments into warzones seem to etch themselves into a lot of the young guys' faces.

They've pretty much exchanged any information they have about the guys they served with. Rudy and Kocher are back in Iraq, Walt knows. Poke's contracting, Brad informs Walt. Nate Fick's at Harvard. Ray's at University, they both know that. "I think everyone knows that," Brad says long-suffering and Walt laughs knowingly.

"How's Tracy?" he asks and Walt grimaces.

"We broke up."

"I'm sorry," Brad says, remembering Walt surreptitiously sniffing her letters when they arrived at Matilda. There had been no need, really. Brad could always smell the cloying, weeks-old perfume perfectly at a distance. He never said anything.

Walt shrugs. "It's okay."

"He got the Dear John last week," Taylor informs Brad when Walt's off to the head.

Silverman shakes his head. "It's a cold-hearted bitch that breaks up with a guy day before Christmas."

Brad shrugs. His girlfriend ran off with his best friend but at least he got to hear about it face-to-face. Back then he'd rather have gotten a letter.

* * *

"Are you okay?" he asks Walt later when they've got a moment by themselves.

"All squared away, Brad. Don't worry about it. It's not going to affect the mission."

"It's not about the mission, Walt." Not for the most part, anyway; Brad is going in with only six guys, three of them he's only been together in combat with for a short time and two of whom he doesn't know, even if he trusts Walt vouching for them. "You and Tracy were together a long time."

"Things were off between us long before I came back here. We'd talked about breaking it off so it wasn't like it was a surprise. 'Sides, it wouldn't be fair to both of us if she had to wait till I came back."

Still, something feels off. Walt seems fine when hanging out with the men. He's alert and sharp when they go over the upcoming mission, fine-tuning it to account for all possible scenarios. Comes up with some insightful suggestions. Laughs and jokes with the guys but Brad feels a kind of indefinable distance. He puts it down to the break-up or him and Walt having been out of each other's orbit for so long and focuses on the task ahead.

* * *

The mission goes off without a hitch. Jumping out of an airplane, gathering intel, sabotaging the enemy's strategically important firepower and coming away without pretty much as a scratch on them is an excellent way to end the year. There are a lot of things done and going wrong in this war but Brad remembers what Poke once said about not feeling responsible for what everyone else outside of his small circle is doing. Brad doubts whether that's a mindset sustainable for the long-term but Marines make do.

He wakes up from a dreamless sleep at o'dark hundred the first night they're back. It’s relatively quiet, just the usual low murmur and rustling of the restless sleepers. An occasional snore coming from the back. When he turns on his side he finds Walt, in the rack next to his, is wide awake. The tent is just shy of too dark to see much of what's going on next to you but he can see, almost feel, Walt's eyes on him.

"You okay?" he whispers.

Walt nods. Closes his eyes and rolls over. Brad doubts he sleeps after that.

* * *

It's not like during OIF, when Walt shot the driver, but Brad worries. It's with things like this, when he misses Ray, who would probably know what to do. He thinks it's safe to admit that in the privacy of his own mind. With Walt going back to his own base the next day, time is running out though and he decides it's time to head over to the phone center and gather some intel.

"What the fuck, Brad. It's... It's 5am on New Year's Eve here," Ray grouches. After he's made sure nothing serious has happened, Brad has to give him that.

"Sorry, Ray. I forgot you've become a snively, weak-assed, cry-baby civilian. How are you?" he adds extra cheerfully.

"Fuck you. Don't tell me you're calling for some idle chit-chat. We talked two weeks ago and you never call more than, like, once every two months."

"Aww, you're keeping track and marking it in your diary? That's sweet." Brad grins.

"So what's wrong?" Ray cuts through the bullshit, suddenly sounding alert and awake.

"Nothing's wrong." There isn't. Not really.

"I'm here to listen, Brad," Ray says, solemn like he's the goddamn battalion chaplain.

"Walt's here."

"I know, man. He told me he was heading your way when we talked on Christmas Day. He calls me regularly."

"His girlfriend dumped him." Ray must know this, too, then.

"I know. And?"

Brad scans the room. He's still the only here for the moment. "I don't know. I tried to talk to him and he said he was fine, but... Something's off."

"You mean your philosophy on being only in a committed relationship with the Marine Corps and your right hand didn't cheer him right up?"

"I don't think Walt wants a relationship with my right hand, Ray." He grins when Ray laughs.

"I don't know. You do have awfully nice hands, Bradley Colbert. Maybe you should ask if he wants to go steady with them."

He's joking. Brad was joking, too. But his mind helpfully conjures up images of his hands on Walt, Walt's everything on him and the room suddenly feels about thirty degrees too hot.

"Look," Ray distracts him, voice serious again. "I know you're with your kind of people now but maybe just try talking to him again instead of acting British and, like, drinking tea?"

"Yeah, I will. You go back to sleep. You need all the beauty sleep you can get."

"You know, I've cleaned up nicely since you ran off to the Royal Marines. I'm quite the catch. The smart, hot lady sleeping right here next to me thinks so too."

"If she's with you, she can't possibly be a lady."

"Well, she is and she isn't. If you know what I mean." Brad can practically hear the eyebrow waggle.

"Ah, a ladyboy," he says.

Ray groans. "Fuck you. Goodbye, Brad."

"Goodnight, Ray."

"And hey, Brad?"

"Let me know how it goes, yeah?"

"I will."

"Happy New Year. Stay safe."

"You too, Ray. And… thanks."

* * *

Brad can do this.

He tries to look more like the confident Recon Marine on a mission he is than the pimply-faced teenager he ridiculously feels like while he waits to intercept Walt from his way back from the showers. He's not going to try to talk to him in the tent where everyone keeps bustling in and out and trying to get them involved in a discussion about what time zone they should observe to actually ring in the New Year.

"Walt," he greets when Walt finally passes by him. He smells like ocean-scented shower gel, his hair still dripping wet into his face and Brad swallows thickly around some left-over Pop-Tart crumbs.

"Brad. Everything okay?"

"Yeah."

After Action Report: Brad – Brad "Iceman" Colbert - can't do this.

* * *

He lets himself get roped into helping build a last-minute makeshift Times Square Ball by Taylor and Silverman and pretty soon they've got a crowd going, technical drawings are made and argued over. There's no time to talk to Walt privately. For a second he’s relieved by that and then he feels like both a coward and a bad friend.

The ball drops at exactly 2400, local time, to loud cheers. Brad observes Walt sneaking off and decides maybe it's time to go about this all differently and take a page from the What Would Ray Person Do? Book. Brad, on occasion, might have to wear adult diapers or go days without a shower but he has some basic level of dignity that refuses to be lowered to the likes of Ray Person. So he's not about to go smear his face in Chef Boyardee even if it might be worth it for the wide and bright smile it had finally brought to Walt's face back then. Instead, he scams some sparklers off Jonesy and goes off to find Walt sitting by himself on The Patio's bench. He stops in front of him and schools his expression into something for a ceremonious occasion.

"Happy New Year, Walt Hasser," he says and with a shit-eating grin bends down to plant an exaggerated, long, hard, wet kiss on Walt's cheek.

He thinks it might be one of the most ridiculous spontaneous things he's ever done and when he pulls back and sees the look on Walt's face, maybe one of the worst too. Walt looks frozen. Long enough for Brad to kind of start worrying. About himself, and maybe his career too if he's misjudged Walt badly enough.

"The hell was that?" Walt frowns at him and looks away.

"I'm sorry, Walt. I was worried about you and I thought if Ray was here- I'm sorry," he rushes out again in his hope to make this right. "It was completely inappropriate."

When Walt looks up at him again, moonlight catches his face and Brad can see he's biting his lip, those steel blue eyes of his dancing.

"Are you laughing at me?"

Walt laughs openly then and Brad sags down beside him in relief. "Fuck, Walt."

"I think if you were thinking of what Ray would do, bein' inappropriate is the only right thing." He smiles widely and in the face of that, Brad can't do anything but do the same. "You don't have to worry about me, though, Brad. I'm fine. But it's nice to know you did."

Brad shrugs and plants the nearly gone sparklers in the ground.

"We used to have those when we were kids," Walt says, looking at them. "It was the only thing my momma would allow."

"I used to squirrel away firecrackers from our Fourth of July pack." Brad can do without the sound of firecrackers when he's home these days. "These are prettier to look at."

"You got any New Year's resolutions?"

"Give command the respect it deserves," he answers gravely, making Walt chuckle. "I don't do resolutions. You?"

"Nah. I figure, if you really wanna change something, you do it. No need waiting till the New Year."

Walt shares a chocolate bar with him and their arms brush occasionally as they sit side by side in the comfortable silence between their small talk. It's the first time Brad feels everything might all right again and he regrets that it's only so shortly before Walt is leaving again.

"By the way, Brad," Walt says as he makes to get up and shifts towards Brad instead. "Happy New Year to you, too."

He presses a kiss to Brad's cheek, so unhurried and tender that it seems the world must have slowed down while it reaches the softest, long hidden parts of him. He feels too shaken, by the kiss itself - he hasn't been kissed like that in a long time, if ever - and the dawning realization of what it means, to say anything.

Walt walks off to go join in the loud and painfully off-key rendition of 'Auld Lang Syne' that’s being sung at the Ball Drop and it isn't until he's about to turn the corner, out of sight, when Brad remembers something.

"Hey Walt," he calls out, relieved to find his voice is at least almost steady to his own ears. Walt turns around and comes back a bit. "Do they have wheat fields where you live?"

"Yeah. Some," Walt frowns at what must seem like a weird non sequitur. Then he adds, hopefully: "Maybe you could come and visit some time? See for yourself?"

"I will. I definitely will," Brad promises with a small smile and Walt seems to get what he means to say but has no words for yet because he smiles in return.

"Solid copy, Brad. Solid copy."


End file.
